


My Life With Rats

by TayBartlett9000



Category: Original Work
Genre: Diary, Gen, Rats, baby rats, being a rat parent, biograpjy, documented events, life story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 03:18:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10549176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: I now own four beautiful rats, Arthur, Ford, Marvin and Zaphod. I have decided to keep a diary detailing my experience with these four beautiful boys.





	1. Chapter 1

My Life with Rats.

By Taylor Bartlett.

 

Chapter one: 5 April 2017.

 

It is a great thing to have pets. One  gets so much love out of them. For years I have   have longed to have pets that I can look after, despite my lack of sight.  So yesterday, I finally got what I have wished for for years. I rescued four baby rats, all male, from a place where they little to no attention and no love what so ever. I brought them back to my house yesterday and have fallen in love with all four of them already. I have never kept rats before so I have decided to write a diary of sorts to document my days spent with them, getting to know them, playing with them and bonding with them.

The four male rats that I  bought yesterday are lovely animals. One  is a beautiful blue-grey and white rat whom I called Arthur. There are two albino rats,  one who is pure white all over whom I called Ford, and the other who has a grey smudge on his nose. I named him Zaphod. There is also a black and white one, a beautiful rat with a black head and shoulders and a white body. I called him Marvin. I love the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy  franchise and for some reason, they are extremely like their name sakes.

Arthur is quite timid and shy but loves meeting people. He seems to have this nervous and twitchy manner about him just now but I do hope he will settle soon. My mother is extremely taken with him. She loves the grey colour of him.

Ford was  incredibally nervous when he came to us. When he went to pick him up, he was not at all keen to go into the carrier that we had brought for them. Then when he got back home, he didn’t want to get out of the carrier and go into the three story cage that we had bought weeks before. He was like a bar of soap, so extreme was his  terror. I was really worried about him at first but he quickly came out of his shell and is now perfectly fine, thank God for that. Mother likes him well enough but she can’t stand their red eyes.

Marvin has the prettiest markings out of all of them so I am told. Like the robot from the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he   has spent most of his short time here  skulking about in the cage on his own. I reckon that once he grows up he’ll  probably be the biggest and shyest out of the group.

And now we come onto Zaphod. That rat is in   essence, a little sod. He is by far the smallest rat among them but is by far the  liveliest. He was the first to step out of the  carrier and he was the first to start exploring the new world that he and his brothers had found themselves in.  He was also the first to start chewing stuff up. Last night before I went to bed, he put all four of his feet in his bed at once and kicked his bedding all around the cage. Some of it even spilled right out of it onto my bedroom floor. So cute, but I reckon that as an adult he will be the trouble maker. I expect every animal group has one of those. Our  three dogs certainly have one trouble maker among them.

So there we are, the first chapter of my rat story, a story that I hope will last many years. I  have not had much opportunity to get to know my little fellas yet but I’m leaving them in  the cage till   Saturday. I have to say, it is very difficult not to open the cage doors to give them a hug. I just hope that they like me and think I am a good rat carer. They  have already sniffed my fingers a few times so hopefully that means that they are settled enough. They threw a major party last night in their cage till about 11 last night but they have fallen asleep now. They are all snuggled up together. I haven’t even had these boys twenty four hours and I already think of them as my own.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two: 7 April 2017.

 

Well, it has been a rather busy day in my house today. A lot has gone on concerning the four rats and I am very excited.

Today was our first socialisation session. I thought that  I would leave them undisturbed in their cage for two or three days once I took them home on Tuesday, which I did. Occationally, I did put my hand inside their cage to either give them a stroke or give them a treat of   some sort. This was so that the boys could get used to my hands and my voice. There was no doubt that this was effective, as our first bonding session went very well today.

Earlier this morning, I again put my hand inside the cage and for the first time, they took food from me and even gave me a quick lick. It was lovely. It was very nice to have them finally interacting with me properly after two days of not bothering with me at all.

Then, this afternoon, my family and I got them out of the cage for the first time. I read somewhere that a technique called confidence handling works very well on rats, especially the scared ones. It’s a  method where by the rat parent picks up said rat in a calm and confident manner and basically  pushes socialisation onto them, something that we have to do now and again. I think this method worked very well, but I’ll only know when I  socialise them again tomorrow afternoon.

It is a very odd sensation, having four baby rats snuggling on your lap at one time. I had Arthur, Ford, Marvin and Zaphod all on my lap, snuggled into  this red fleece blanket that I had on my lap at the time.

 The cutest by far was Arthur. Up until today, I thought that Arthur was the most skittish of the four. When the rats are in the cage, he is always the one hiding under the fleece blanket. Whenever someone else who could see came into the room, they were worried that he had escaped. Such a funny sod. Anyway. Arthur was by far the most entertaining. He sat on my lap then jumped onto my shoulder. He then crawled onto my neck and sat there, curled up and snuggled in my hair. It is even more odd having a baby rat sitting on your neck. An odd sensation, but a nice one. They have very odd feet do rats, and very sharp claws that tickle more than  hurt. Arthur liked settling there, while Ford, Marvin and Zaphod snuggled in the fleece.

I was surprised how    cuddly they were, especially when one considers where they came from. The  four rats had been in a place where they had been given no love, no attention and no socialisation so I thought that the socialisation process would be much harder and would take longer than it was today. I am glad that they seem to like me because I was worried yesterday that they would not love me at all, although that is always a fear that I have had.

So there we are, a busy day in the house today. I bet the rats are tired after their small venture out of the cage. I would be if I had to explore as much as these four have explored today. I bet they are also warn out and overwhelmed by the situation. When my dad was getting Ford out of the cage, the poor thing hurt his foot while he was running around trying to evade dad’s grip. Poor thing. I do hope he is ok. He  bled a little but I think it stopped  fairly quickly. I hope that he doesn’t see  the socialisation process of today as a negative experience for him. I hope he still trusts enough to   step out of the cage a second time tomorrow afternoon. I do want Ford to be as cuddly as his brothers. I’m sure he  will be fine in the end. He is just a kitten yet. Babies are always much more fearful than adult rats. We’ll see what tomorrow brings for us.


End file.
